Retirement lost its appeal quickly for Ken Chase after he decided 18 years ago to end his long career with a restaurant supply company.

Taking it easy just wasn’t in his nature.

“Shortly after I retired I started finding things to keep busy,” he said between wheelchair runs at Billings Clinic last week. “It wasn’t hard to find things.”

 Chase was at the hospital from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, escorting patients from their rooms or from out-patient procedures to waiting cars outside the atrium doors. Four volunteers are on duty during those hours to wheel patients around hospital corridors. Volunteers may escort 45 to 55 patients a day, depending on how many doctors are there, he said.

“At this hospital we have a policy,” Chase said. “Everyone leaves here in a wheelchair, whether they’re here for a week or a few hours.”

What he likes about his assignment is that most of his customers leave happy.

“It’s a real pleasant job,” Chase said. “They all have smiles on their faces because they are going out the door. They’re going home.”

On other days of the week, Chase can be found delivering Meals on Wheels, talking to tourists at the Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center or working on the Mayor’s Commission on Homelessness’ Project Homeless Connect. He helps elementary school students through the Golden Gate Kiwanis’ BUG (Bring Up Grades) Program and is an usher at the First Presbyterian Church.

Chase also serves on the Montana Nursing Home Administrators Licensing Board, is a member of the RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteers Program) Advisory Group and is active in the Shrine Hospital Corps. At Christmastime, he’s Santa at the Shrine Hospital and RSVP parties.

A long list of previous volunteer jobs includes driving a courtesy van for Billings Clinic, helping at the Food Bank and working to organize the amateur hockey league in Billings. He has also volunteered at the county jail and at the welcome desk at the airport.

Chase is on his third and final term on the Yellowstone Council on Aging. When he’s term-limited out in July, he doesn’t expect to cut back volunteer hours.

“I suppose I’ll find something else,” he said. “There are always opportunities.”

Chase estimates he volunteers more than 1,000 hours a year, a pace he has kept for the last 10 years. He was one of the first to win a President’s award through RSVP for accumulating 4,000 or more hours of volunteer service.

He’s selective about where he volunteers.

“I have a policy,” he said. “I can’t be on a board unless I can contribute something. I pick things where I can be the most useful.”

Born 80 years ago in Farmington, Minn., farmhouse, Chase grew up mostly in Pipestone in the southern part of the state. After a year studying agriculture at the University of Minnesota, his life took a sudden turn on the first Tuesday in November in 1948.

“I was listening to the radio and heard that Harry Truman was elected president and I went and joined the Army,” he laughed.

He was 21 and like most of America settling into the aftermath of World War II, was taken by surprise when North Korean troops invaded South Korea in 1950. By September of that year, he was on his way to the Far East with the Eighth Army. By November the army was nearing the Yalu River, which marks the border between North Korea and China. The Eighth Army was strung out along the Chosin Reservoir in a bitterly cold winter.

“We had summer clothes and it was 40 or 50 below,” he recalled.

He said he escaped the frozen and frostbitten toes and feet suffered by many of his comrades by disobeying rules.

“When I climbed into my sleeping bag at night, I took my boots and socks off so they would dry out,” he said.

Then the worst happened. China entered the war turning loose hundreds of thousands of troops on the Eighth Army and the Marines on the other side of the reservoir.

“The Chinese came out of the hills by the thousands and thousands, blowing bugles and horns,” he said.

It was a bloodbath that lasted days until the remnants of the American forces were able to battle their way south. During almost a year of combat duty, Chase was wounded slightly and earned a Purple Heart.

“I tell my friends it took me 40 years to cross the Yalu River,” he said. “My wife and I went on a trip to China in 1992.”

Chase and Ann were married in 1959 and are preparing to celebrate their 50th anniversary with a cruise through the Panama Canal.

“It will be the honeymoon we never had — just the two of us,” he said with a smile.

After his discharge in November 1951, Chase used the GI Bill to enroll at the University of Minnesota and later at North Dakota State University in Fargo. His benefits ran out before he finished his degree.

He answered an ad for a salesman job in Minneapolis and began a 35-year-career in the restaurant supply business. The job brought him to Billings on April 1, 1972. He and Ann raised two sons and a daughter here.

Before Chase retired, Ann did most of the volunteering. She helped organize the Food Bank and recruited him to help. He took vacation time during the holiday season each year to work with her in the Food Bank’s old, unheated warehouse.

“I remember sorting food when it was 20 below,” he said. “We had to work quickly so the food wouldn’t freeze. I tell you, when they opened the new building this month, it brought tears to my eyes.”

Every hour he has spent during his long years of volunteer service has been a joy, he said.

“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it,” Chase said. “It’s so rewarding that it’s just unexplainable.”